I've been meaning to write lately, but I never got around to it, and now I don't really remember what I was going to write about. A great loss for humanity, I'm sure.

Just got home from lunch, my mom and I went to eat, and noticed a "store closing" sign on the Wherehouse Music. I wasn't that excited, because they're so expensive to begin with, I wasn't sure if even a closeout sale could make it a good deal. It was really picked over (I imagine they sent the popular stuff to the other stores which are remaining open), but they actually did have some good deals. Emmylou Harris Anthology and Talking Heads Sand in the Vaseline for just over twenty bucks each were both great deals, and I was surprised to see they had Pink Martini Sympathique for $12.50, which is hard to find. I just recently bid on one for e-bay, and think I was willing to go higher than that. So I ended up getting those, as well as Echo and the Bunnymen (figured for under ten bucks, might as well), some other Talking Heads albums also under ten bucks, and Badly Drawn Boy Have You Fed the Fish for a grand total of $108.54. A bit more than I planned to spend when I came in, but I'm convinced I got good deals, on products I actually wanted, so it was worth it.

I haven't run lately, I banged my knee on a desk, so I've been taking it easy. Tomorrow I'll resume my running. But it means I am again without the endorphins from running, and am depressed (though I was depressed even before I skipped a run, so I don't think the running is the cause, though without it I'm sure its more profound). The nights especially get to me, which is a shame, since I used to be a night person. But with work and school, I suppose its for the best that I'm getting away from that. But tossing and turning in bed feeling sorry for myself isn't how I want to spend my evenings.

I just realized that while I've been typing all this, my fly was open. I have rectified the situation, I appologize for the lack of respect I showed to you, gentle reader, you deserved better than that.

Hot Club of Cowtown will be at the Casbah on Friday. I'm looking forward to that. I ordered one of their CDs about two weeks ago from Amazon.com, and despite the claim that it would probably ship in 24-48 hours, it didn't ship until Monday. So when I noticed they were coming this weekend (and the CD had not yet shipped), I was amused that I would be able to see them in person before I had even received my CD. I've been buying a lot of stuff from Amazon lately, partly because its convenient and, with free shipping, fairly reasonably priced, but I think I might get back to buying more stuff from independent outlets like AllDirect, with which I have had good experiences with in the past. As it is, when I search for DVDs on DVD Price Search, I almost invariably end up buying them from Deep Discount DVD. That weakened Canadian dollar is really helping me out. But Amazon is a slick site with lots of product information and reviews, and I'm always getting some sort of coupon or gift certificate for a few bucks off, so I doubt I'll abandon Amazon completely. I've just been disappointed with how quickly I've gotten things from them lately.

Which reminds me: I was hoping the Futurama Season One DVD would come in the mail today, but no suck luck.

I was about to bring this entry to a close, but now I recall at least one thing I did this week: I went to Barona and played Poker on Monday. I had planned to spend the evening listing some of Dad's personal effects on Half.com (CDs, mostly), but for some reason I really, really didn't feel like doing that, so I went up to play poker instead. Won a nice amount of change. It was the first time I'd ever won a pot in a rack attack (they draw a table at random, and add a rack of chips--$100--to the next pot). Usually, I stay in with garbage because I'm getting good odds, but don't wind up with a hand, and so the "promotion" costs me a pretty penny. But this time I lucked out, caught an ace on the river, and my aces-up held up in a six-way pot (usually you'd need at least a straight in that situation), so I got half the pot (its high-low split). Made about $70 on that hand, though I was down about $30 before that, and then the very next hand I scooped a very nice pot. I ended up over $150 ahead, which is very nice at 1-3 limits. Especially since I only played a few hours. It was a bit annoying at times, some of the players and one dealer particularly were annoying discussing the war. First off, any "Freedom Fries" discussion annoys the hell out of me. If you hate the French so much, blow up the Statue of Liberty. And shred the Declaration of Indepence while you're at it, since we'd all be having high tea and saluting the Union Jack without France. And then they discuss Iraqi war atrocities, which are indeed bad, but it just aggravated me because none of them have the stories right: "And then they shot five of our soldiers execution-style on live TV," that sort of thing.

I don't feel like writing much about the war. I'm still agin' it, but too late to stop it now. Seems to me protests would be more successful if they took a breather, let the war play itself out a bit more, I don't think they're winning themselves any converts right now, macing the police and all (though the police could mellow out, as well). Protesting Halliburton, however, is a very good idea right now. Dick Cheney is a traitor, in my opinion; to hear him now, he was always convinced Sadaam was a mass murderer who couldn't be trusted, so why did he do business with him? And why is Halliburton in Iran, stop three (two?) on the U.S.'s "Axis of Evil" tour. But I digress...the war itself seems to be going just as a reasonable person would have expected, no cake walk, some losses, but we're doing well. The stock market proves itself as irrational as ever, viewing a few POWs as shocking setbacks. It was going to happen. We've still lost more soldiers from our Black Hawk helicoptors falling from the sky than from anything the Iraqis have done. I still think this will be done soon. Baghdad's the uncertain element, but I still think the U.S. will control Iraq very shortly. Again, I don't think its until a few months after we regain control that we'll begin to appreciate the truly difficult problems we face. Anyway, I've already written more about the war than I wanted to, I believe this will be my last word on the subject for awhile.